National Review on Ajit Pai '97

The Federal Communications Commission has pulled the plug on its controversial “Critical Information Needs” survey that sparked a bipartisan uproar over government oversight of news gathering.

That’s a major victory for Ajit Pai, one of the agency’s Republican commissioners. The baby-faced 41-year-old attorney rocketed to national attention after he slammed the study in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in mid-February.

His words had their intended effect. After he characterized the study as a government attempt to meddle in news coverage and pressure news organizations into covering certain stories and ignoring others, Fox News gave the matter virtually wall-to-wall coverage.

The FCC last week threw out the CIN study’s most explosive portion, a plan to question reporters and editors in both broadcast and non-broadcast media about their editorial decisions and work environments, and said it would revise the study. On Friday it went a step further, terminating the study entirely.

But Pai isn’t calling off the dogs just yet. Now, he’s turning his attention to another issue brewing at the FCC: the agency’s push to adopt net-neutrality rules that would govern how Internet service providers run their networks.